St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1887-09-11

- iii nus. MIS-.
Mayor Susannah Madeira Salter. or
Mayor Mrs. ,Susannah Madeira Salter, as
one may chose to call her, is only
average height and weighs 12S pounds,
She 0''' IS, however, eei sonie tTpicsi
frontiersman's wife, possessed
OF Drawn and sinew rather than pleas
ing plumpneSS and roundneSS of form.
She talks in an easy, confident style.
in fairly good English, in which the
Western mixture of lenses sometimes
becomes prominent. She is always
properly dignifed, and in all the ex-
perience of Argonia has never been
known to crack joke in the council
chamber. Her eyes are dark gray and
While her hair is inclined to golden and
is worn parted and crimped. She makes
all her own clothes, as well as those of
her four children, the second of whom
was the first child born in the town.
The Youngest is a little girl year old.
Mrs. Salter was born of Quaker
parents on a farm near Lamira, Belmont
county, o., in 1852, but when twelve
years of age, went to Kansas with her
parents, and there was given limited
schooling at the Kansas State Industrial
college, of which Congressman j. A.
Anderson. was then president. There
she met Louis A. Salter, son of an ex-
lieutenant governor of the state, who
was working his way through college by
running eITandS and doing other work.
The future mayoress studied the art of
dressmaking, and now boasts that she
has paid for the making of but one
gown in her life.
In the fall of 1880 the present political
leader of Argonia's deStinies married
MIR. Salter, and in 1883 she, her husband
and her parents moved to the town over
whose government she now preSides.
The first mayor was Mrs. Salter's
father. The first winter Mr.. and Mrs.
Salter lived in deserted corn house,
the windows of which were the chute
holes, while the cooking was done ON a
gasoline stove. portable heater fur
in business and the couple began to
prosper. They organized a Baptist
church, the first in the place, and the
wife took leading part in the f0rma-
ton of Women Christian Temperance
lodge, the meetings of which she always
insisted in having conducted according
to the approved parliamentary rules Of
debating societies, with which she had
been made more or less familiar at the
ln0uStrlal school.
Mrs. Salter was nominated for mayor
by the. Woman's Christian Temperance
union last spring, on strictly prohibit
ton was held in the Baptist church the
and was opened by the singing of
America" followed by the reading of
a psalm and by prayer. A ticket
was nominated. On election
day the anti-Prohibitionists ordered
their tickets printed with Mrs. Salter's
name4aS the candidate for mayor as
burlesque.. The temperance workers
thereupon waited on Mrs. Salter, find
ing her at the washtub. She was ex-
ceedingly angry when informed of the
insult, but after a council of war
consented to take the Office if
elected. Her friends then went to work
she had received three-fOurthS of the
votes cast. She, however, stoutly dis
claims any prediction towards
woman's rights, and in all family mat
tiers she defers to her husband, we'll
TODD attorney and real estate agent.
Mrs. Salter declares that one term is all
she wants, and that she is not ambitious
for any further political preferment.
She says, whenever questioned on the
subject. that she will be glad when her
term is ahded, as she wants nothing
better than private life. She receives
the priDcefy salary of 81 year for guild
ing the affairs of the town. The people
as rule are not overmuch pleased with
her administration, and it is safe to say
that next spring she will not be called
upon to take a second term. In the
council chamber it is said that she pre-
sides with becoming severity, checking
all inclinations to levity with magis-
terial frowns.S